U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,994 discloses an interior ceiling structure typically includes a system of sound absorbing and heat insulating ceiling tiles or panels installed on a metal grid. The grid is suspended below a structural ceiling of a room to create a plenum, or air space, between the rear sides of the tiles and the ceiling. The front sides of the tiles are viewed from below as a dropped ceiling of the room. Ceiling panels with desirable acoustic characteristics have a core of light weight material for sound absorption and structural rigidity, layered on front and rear sides by material coatings or coverings, all of which provide sound-absorbing properties. Another desirable attribute of ceiling tiles is to provide a consistent surface finish and appearance.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,441 discloses a fabric for ceiling tiles having a fabric layer of textured glass woven yarn with a white pigmented resin, and a flame resistant polymeric fluorocarbon face coating applied to a first side of said fabric layer; and a flame resistant opaque acrylic resin applied to a second side of said fabric layer.
Typically, a front side of the ceiling tile is laminated to a fiber glass cloth in which glass fibers are white in color, as produced from a white colored molten glass composition. Prior to the invention, the fiber glass cloth was constructed of a veil of nonwoven slender fibers bonded together to provide a smooth surface cloth with a random pattern of micro sized pores through the cloth. The white color fibers matched a surface paint color, which when painted with white paint provided a white smooth surface on the finished tile when viewed, especially when viewed as a dropped ceiling. The smooth surface was populated with a pattern of micro sized pores. The pores extended through the veil and extended further through the paint covering the veil, which provided a textured pattern due solely to the micro sized pores through the smooth surface on the finished tile. A drawback of the finished tile was that the smooth surface was easily discolored by attracted dust, and aging paint showed fading and discoloration over time. Further, slight warping and misalignment of different tiles were readily observable as interruptions of the otherwise smooth surface.
Prior to the invention, ceiling tiles that have a high NRC above 0.80, a light reflectance (LR) of the surface of the ceiling tile, do not have texture. They are simple 2-dimensional finishes (with a plain flat finish or a fissured appearance due to pores through the flat finish. A desired ceiling tile would have a high NRC above 0.80 with a textured finish, and preferably a textured finish accentuated with contrasting colors and individual colors at different depths of surface texture.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,189,794 discloses a cloth being made to resist formation of pills.